[Rarebooks] fa: MATERIA MEDICA or A DESCRIPTION OF SIMPLE MEDICINES 1716

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, October 26. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/m9n3x9o

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


Joseph Pitton de Tournefort: Materia Medica; or, A Description of Simple Medicines Generally Us’d in Physick; Fully and accurately demonstrating their Uses, Virtues, and Places of Growth. As also Their Operating and Acting upon Human Bodies according to the Principles of the New Phylosophy, Chymistry, and Mechanism. With an Appendix, shewing the Nature and Use of Mineral Waters. Written originally by the learned Monsieur Tournefort, Botanist to the French King. Faithfully translated into English. London: Printed by W. H. for Andrew Bell at the Cross-Keys and Bible in Cornhill, 1716. The second edition corrected. Rebound in full modern leather; [20], 406, [8], 8 pp.; with 16 pp. of publisher's adverts at the end. ESTC T132746.

Browning and spotting to the contents with occasional stains, but sound and handsomely rebound. Front and rear (blank) endpapers with early ownership signatures: Joseph Atkinson his book called the Herbal, January 25 1753; Ebenezer Thomson his hand 1754; etc. Taken from Tournefort's lectures at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, both the first edition and this second, corrected, edition of the English translation appeared before the work was published in French (1717). Divided into two parts: I. Of Evacuating Medicines (Purging Medicines, Diuretical Medicines, Of Medicines evacuating or discharging upwards, call'd  Emetics or Vomits, etc.); II. Of Altering Medicines (Cephalick, Hipnotick and Narcotick, Stomachical and Worm-destroying, Hepatick and Splenick, Medicines lessening or abating the praeternatural Motion of the Humours, etc.). With detailed descriptions of hundreds of remedies derived from plants and elsewhere as well as instructions on how to prepare and apply them ("in promoting the Expulsion of Urine… nothing can be more safe, and withal effectual, than the anointing of the Perinaeum or lower Part of the Belly, and the Region of the Navel with the Oil of Sulphur wherein Spanish Flies have been boiled").